Mykonos Muse

Myths, like the waves, never cease to define the state of mind that is this miraculous Greek island

From a distance, Mykonos, dressed in dazzling white limestone, looks like a giant sculpture. The stark white houses, so typical of the post-Byzantine Cycladic tradition, look like rocks "strewn by the Great Creator of the world," as the Greek architect Aris Konstantinidis noted in his homage to the island's architecture, Two Villages from Mykonos. The landscape is naked, sparse, with just a few trees and a few thorny bushes battered by wild winds.

Mykonos is an island defined by its traditional cubist architecture. "Unless you have seen the houses of Mykonos, you can't pretend to be an architect," Le Corbusier, the legendary pioneer of modernism, declared after his first visit to the Cyclades in 1933. "Whatever architecture has to say, it is said here."